‘DEATH MATCH - Kolya's War’
"Game of Their Lives"
"Win and you die.
Lose and you live." What would be your choice if your life and the honour
of your country depended on the outcome of a soccer match? In 1942 in Nazi
occupied Ukraine, the players of Kiev simply did
what they had to do... 
London, 2012 – UK and Berlin-based Hope & Glory Pictures Ltd (H&G)
are proud to announce the production of the forthcoming feature film ‘The Game of Their Lives", a profound and poignant drama about 16-year old Kolja,
whose life and purpose is transformed after losing both his parents in the
first dramatic air raid on Kiev by Nazi Germany in the late afternoon of June
22nd 1941.
DEATH MATCH is an original and fictional coming of age tale based on actual wartime atrocities in the midst of the tragic struggle for survival during the brutal occupation of Kiev at the time of the German ‘Barbarossa’ invasion.
The film follows the brave and
breathtaking journeys of young Kolya, a highly promising football talent whose sister
Natalya falls in love with German Major Conrad von Trapp; Kolya's former teacher and protégé now turned Partisan, Kalyna Petrovska ...
the charismatic Jewish, former Dynamo Kiev goalkeeper Mykola Trusejvich and his team mates, and their fanatical protégé and bakery manager Yosif Kordik, who hides his true identity.
The film climaxes in the starving Kiev football team playing their final match against a specially selected team set up by the German Wehrmacht. Kiev won against all odds, but in an act of barbaric revenge, several players were executed or tortured to death after the game. Today the Kiev players are remembered as great Ukrainian heroes.
DEATH MATCH was developed by the H&G
company owners and producers, Anya Padel and Raphael Socha, and will also be
directed by Socha.
DEATH MATCH is in financing stage and will as of spring 2013 be produced in Bulgaria, Ukraine, the UK, France and Germany.
v Hope&Glory Pictures © 2012